Larry Bird (left) and Donnie Walsh (right), shown here with Pacers owner Herb Simon when Bird announced he was resigning in 2012, have rebuilt the team into an NBA title contender.

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In 2004, the Indiana Pacers lost in the Eastern Conference finals and appeared poised for a run at the NBA championship with a young, talented nucleus. Then came the brawl. It's taken nearly a decade but the Pacers once again have people thinking about titles. Here's the inside story on how the Pacers were rebuilt as told by the project's chief architects: Larry Bird and Donnie Walsh.

Larry Bird's gut told him it was time.

The Indiana Pacers had lost seven of their past eight games, but that wasn't the stretch Bird was looking at. He was looking ahead. He saw a stretch of 10 games and figured coach Jim ...